


while the world of gain and appearance and mirth goes on

by misantlery



Category: Timothy Wilde Mysteries - Lyndsay Faye
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Missing Scene, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:29:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21946615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misantlery/pseuds/misantlery
Summary: When James woke, the morphine had worn off, and he was in agony from his hair to his toenails.
Relationships: Valentine Wilde/James Playfair
Comments: 3
Kudos: 21
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	while the world of gain and appearance and mirth goes on

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pollitt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pollitt/gifts).



> Set at the end of The Fatal Flame.

When James woke, the morphine had worn off, and he was in agony from his hair to his toenails. The stench of his own fever sweat added an extra, nauseating spin to his head, and a twist to his stomach. He had, however, somehow arrived home in the last day or so, so at least there was--

No. Shapes were resolving themselves as the light struck his eyes as less harsh. This was not his house near Washington Square. It was Valentine's on Spring Street, in Val's ward in name now as well as fact, and Valentine was sitting by his own bed, his hand cupping James's gently, his eyes quiet and dark.

It came back to him then. They'd taken a cab from Mrs. Boehm's. He'd been listing in bed, floating on a new dose of morphine, when Val had come barging in, saying something about not even sending _word_ to him, and stopping mid-sentence to fall to his knees beside the mattress. Even as badly as what was left of James's skin hurt, he'd pressed himself into Val's arms, and Val had said--something--into his hair, which hadn't hurt at the time, and James, without hearing the words, had understood that they'd won. And that helped, because he didn't think he could have borne it if Valentine had lost the election. Val had also said that he wasn't going to let James out of his sight for the rest of his life, a promise he was presently making good on.

"I'd ask you how you feel," said Val, finally, "but by the look of it, it's akin to coming off a binge and four bar fights."

"That," said James, his mouth dry, "seems to adequately describe it." The contact between his back and the bed-linens was excruciating, and he tried to push himself upright--his left arm and shoulder objected strenuously, even with Valentine's help, and when he managed it, he felt shivery, and exhausted, and like it might have been time to lie back down again. His skin didn't feel like skin: rather, he seemed to be wearing a vest two sizes too small, with bristles and thorns on the inside, like the monks of old.

"Here," said Valentine, and grabbed a bottle of laudanum.

He took a swig from it first, and James was opening his mouth to demand what good that would do him, when Valentine leaned forward and transferred the laudanum from his mouth to James's, kissing whatever spilled out the corners, and James found that his lips did not hurt, nor his chin, and he touched Valentine's hair, held him there for a second, before letting him go before he could do it again. After a few times, the pain everywhere else dulled to something tolerable, and James was able to rest his head on Val's broad shoulder. He could sleep here, he thought. There'd been a panicked moment, as the tar had rolled over his shoulder and across his chest, when he'd thought he might die without ever seeing Valentine again. That he'd walked out the door when Valentine had needed him--had _wanted_ him--by his side. 

He'd done it to protect Valentine, of course, but Valentine hadn't understood that--or, rather, he had, because he'd said something to that effect, that Jim didn't need to protect him, that afternoon in Timothy's rooms. But of course James needed to protect him. "I love you, you great idiot," he'd said, not high enough to confess much more, but it'd been enough to shock Val into silence all over again.

"Don't fall asleep on me," Val rumbled.

James shook his head. It sent his vision swirling, then darkening, and finally shivering back into focus. "Whyever not?"

"Your bandages need to be changed."

"No." James hissed and tried to pull away, but every one of his muscles rebelled at the very idea.

"I know it will hurt--"

"Nothing worse than what I got at boarding school for various infractions," he said, and finally wrenched himself away. Now that Valentine had mentioned it, he noticed the stack of white cloth on the table, a pot of unguent, a bowl of steaming water. "It's--I look a fright."

Valentine sat back and blinked at him, opening and closing his mouth several times before asking, "And you think I _mind_?"

"Well," said James, hoping to hell that his right hand could keep holding him up as he pointed his left at the long white scar across his throat, not entirely covered with burns and bandages, "it's been two years and you haven't stopped flinching every time you see this--"

"Not because of how it looks--"

"Why else--"

"Because someone _hurt_ you," snarled Val. "Because someone hurt you, and I couldn't do a damn thing about it, all right?"

Oh. When James had staggered back into the benefit, cravat pressed against the cut, he'd thought the look on Valentine's face had entirely to do with the fact that his younger brother had been abducted, and James had not been able to stop it. Still-- "Then what will you feel when you see all of _this_?"

"I'll think I'm glad I killed Robert Symmes," said Val shortly. "My conscience wasn't too burdened by it in the first place, but I dare say I can rest easy on that count now."

"Oh," said James. Then, much to his own surprise, "Good. The man was vile."

Val looked at him slantwise, and this time, when he reached for the bandages, James did not twist away. "So he's vile enough that you approve of his murder, but object when I challenged him for the post of alderman."

"Disgraced, he'd want revenge. Dead, he can't take it." He bit the inside of one cheek as the linen came away from his wounds, taking some of what passed as his skin with it.

Val noticed. "More laudanum?"

"If you would be so kind."

Val was quiet, and it did James no favors, for even with the laudanum, the pain of the bandages coming off, and the unguent going on, made him hiss and, once, moan. He was mortified, but Val didn't address it, merely kept on, his mouth slightly thinner, his eyes slightly grimmer. Perhaps he was thinking about Symmes's death.

"Is that why you didn't want me challenging him?" he asked finally.

"In the ring? Valentine, the man was a sadist. He'd have hurt you because he could, then claimed it a simple mistake."

Valentine smoothed the last bandages into place. Knowing it was the last seemed to make it hurt a great deal less. "No, in the election."

Oh, God. "Tammany Hall told you to throw the match. Symmes had money and power, and in my experience those are difficult to beat."

"But I had the people," said Val. "And they understand about Hunkers--that anyone who'll treat a person as less than human because of the color of his skin, or the god she prays to, can just as easily treat them as less than human for the accent of their mother country, or how little cole they have in their pockets. I have the people, and that's where the votes are."

James did not remind Valentine that Symmes had been a whinger and a liar, a slumlord and a rapist, and, for all he knew, a murderer, when he'd first been elected. "And knowing that, he'd fight even dirtier; he'd cheat; and your brother was right as to the legality of sodomy."

Valentine scowled. "No one's going to clap me--"

"I lost my family," said James. "I lost my friends. I was banished from England on pain of death, and I do not take the thought of ten years' imprisonment lightly, not when Symmes had the motive and opportunity to put you there."

Valentine exhaled roughly. "You might have a point."

"I _do_ have a point. And I assumed you'd assayed the risk as I had--" Lucy Adams had _died_ in this very room, because Tammany Hall had thought her a stumbling block to her not-quite-husband's career. "--which of course you hadn't, but I was trying to keep you _safe_."

Valentine looked haggard, almost as much as he'd been in the earlier days of their acquaintance. "I certainly wasn't having very many thoughts beyond wanting to kick Robert Symmes out of government, and none of them involved any daylight between me and you, and as for keeping me safe--there's more important things than that, and we first made acquaintance when you offered to fight Symmes and seven other political luminaries for the life of a _stray dog_."

"That was different," said James. "I was newly arrived in New York, and there wasn't a soul to care if I lived or died, and, Valentine, people need you, people _love_ you, and sometimes it feels like you're the only person who's indifferent to your continued existence."

Valentine looked away, his throat working for a few seconds. "I'm not. Not when you're in it. When you left--"

"If you'd lost because of me--"

"You?" Valentine shook his head. "We're hardly a secret, and anyone as didn't know before is going to learn soon enough that you're in my bed and like to remain there."

"Convalescing." And yet the way Val had made it _sound_ \-- "You cannot tell me that your constituents won't mind."

"The Irish might object, what with you being English and all. But I'll tell them you've been cast out for crimes against queen and country, and that ought to soften them up."

James sighed. Val could, he knew it now. "I'll show you offenses against queen and country."

"I'll hold you to it," Val said. "Jimmy--I won't lie and say I couldn't do this without you, but the truth of it is, I don't _want_ to do this without you." He swallowed and took James's hand. "I want you. Any way you'll have me. I'll swear off doxies--"

"You haven't been with a woman since last June," murmured James, hating that he knew that.

"--I'll be honest with Timothy about what goes on between us--"

"Do you _want_ your brother to never speak to me again?"

"--anything," pressed Val. "say the word and it's yours. I'm yours."

Their rencontre in Timothy's rooms was still a morphine haze to James, but he remembered Val saying the same words then. _I'm yours_ , and _I love you_ , and _how_ \-- It'd been almost three years ago when Valentine had told him about Timothy and Mercy Underhill. He'd sounded so terribly confused that any man, and his brother in particular, might save up what he could of his meager wages in the hope of proposing marriage one day. "He loves her," James had said. "Haven't you ever been in love?" Val had been quiet long enough for James to know the answer was no. Then he'd swung James onto his lap and begun kissing his neck, and unbuttoning his shirt, asking who had time for love. It'd been so thoroughly transparent, but James remembered how Val's eyes had looked, how green and vulnerable and hurt that he hadn't been in love, and had known not to push further. 

He kissed Valentine now, even though his lips were dry, and his breath surely awful. "Take off your shoes, and come to bed with me," he said, finally. He wanted Valentine to stop acting insulted whenever Tim reminded him that he slept with a man; he wanted Valentine to not be ready to throw his life away; he wanted Valentine to accept that he could be loved, that he was loved. But those were delicate conversations, and they would keep. "You are alive, and Robert Symmes is dead; and, at the moment, that seems more than enough for me."

Valentine's boots were off in record time. James managed to nestle his head on Valentine's chest, and turn so that his body balanced on top of his unburnt arm and shoulder. Valentine's fingers rested by his back, just out of reach.

"Also," said James, as fatigue and laudanum fully won out over discomfort, "in the morning, or evening, or whenever I wake next, you are to take that waistcoat of yours with the mermaids and the eels, and burn it."

"It's my favorite."

"It's obscene." He yawned. "And I won't be seen in public with you in it."

"I shall miss it," said Val. "What if I have one made with mermen and eels instead?"

"Don't you dare," said James, and fell asleep.


End file.
